Category Archives: Part 5 Personal Project

I have sketched and pondered how to move forward with the samples I have produced. I have ideas of producing mourning jewellery from the distemper filled negatives, a mourning cape from the rust dyed fabric adding trims made from cine film. But they all seem hollow ideas. I came across a piece of paper on my work desk.. It was underneath a pile of my samples and i neither remember where I got the quote upon it nor the author. But it came to me and settled something in my heart. I wanted to not make something abstract that had no obvious symbol of what had been haunting me since I started Exploring ideas and sought out my tribe. My family history. Whilst I want to explore a way of expressing myself that isn’t obvious, anecdotal. I wanted to show the discoveries and celebrate the life of my Great Grand Mother The quote reads:

‘Collections of work which evoke moments in our lives. Here are people and glimpses of stories making themes of our very existence. reminiscent works which reference mythology and storytelling, using the line of thread to connect relationships and define emotions such as suffering, hope and renewal.

These are punctuations which reveal the sense of self and identity, the making of connections between the touching and tactile quality of textile, and the expression of feelings’.

I copied the text and searched on-line for where I may have got it from. Fortunately I was successful in finding it as a quote on Alice kettles website.

I had been looking through my workbooks for all of Exploring ideas and there were certain approaches that when I looked they almost punched me in the stomach. The darning over faces was one set of samples that in my eye had a power to them. They resonated with me as I have had times in my life that I have wished I could erase myself from. The act of removing a face, and as I wrote, ‘Can we obliterate the past?’ We can remove our images from photographs, but we cannot remove those experiences from our history.

I undertook therapy a few years ago, where I explored my own history and I worked on events, relationships and how they had shaped my own view of myself. It was painful, hard work and most of the time I would have run away from doing it. What I had hoped for and what I got from it was the truth of who I am I was able to see a truth that had been obscured by other people’s word and actions to me that I had believed. They were wrong and I was able to be guided to the truth with the care of my therapist. She once told me ” We cannot rewrite our past, but we can learn to live with it in a different way.’

As I was working with my therapist, I started to work on a patchwork. It had items from my past within it. Quotes, thoughts, a glove from my first wedding and more. I was building a ‘wrapping cloth’. A cloth that I would have wished to present and gift to myself when I was born. It would have words of encouragement and in painful lonely times I would have used it to wrap around myself to feel the warmth of the love that went into its production. As I read the quote from Alice kettle, I knew that I would like to make a similar quilt that would hold the many approaches i have worked on as I have progressed though Exploring Ideas. I feel It will allow me to produce something that has a story to tell. That a viewer would need, if they wished to take time to see all it contains. The hidden stories and textures that I have gathered.

The course notes ‘Design is as much about what you leave out as what you include and the ability to be succinct needs practice’. I feel that in the next stage of gathering together those approaches that are important to me, I will be able to asses as I move forward. In my reintroduction to being materials led, I shall allow myself to judge each section of the quilt, as I go along.

These thoughts and realisations move me into Stage 4, Making a story board. In deed that is exactly where I am now. A board that tells not only the story of what samples and approaches I can take forward, but also of which aspects of my tribes story I reveal.

I sat and leafed through the workbooks and sketchbooks I had produced so far in Exploring ideas. I took photographs of work that ‘hit me’ in some way. I was looking for the twitch in my gut that didn’t necessarily tell me clearly why or what but something that was more instinctive.

Two things struck me: firstly how I again returned to my ancestry project which was in Part one looking at cultures. I have unfinished business with this but I am not sure what? I am drawn to the hidden text, stitching to selectively show aspects of the text, darning to obliterate images or part of images.

Secondly, how in my sketchbooks I have used vivid colours and played with textures and ideas using collage, ripping and using a variety of mediums, pastels, acrylics and machine and hand stitch.

Both are completely different as though two people have done the work. This puzzled me. It also showed me how when I began Exploring ideas I had got into the groove of working materials led, playing with ideas and also I had got a strong working process of beginning with research and then producing samples. I can remember being inspired and excited by both processes.

I knew I had lost these newly learnt skills through my working on the printing course, which is extremely well documented. I know from my tutors report for part 3 that I need to loosen up and get back into these grooves if my work was to develop to the standard I want and the course demands. I am fearful and anxious that I may not be able to, but that I know is my ego talking and in truth I want to progress and develop too much to be halted long by these fears. I decided to photograph part 4 and look for glimmers of these processes. (Drama Queen moment).

I took most images of the decaying fabric, distempered fabric and manipulated negatives and cine film. I have a voice in the back of my mind when producing any samples and it is of my tutor saying” Push them as far as you can, don’t stop short of what they can be”. In this work I did stop too early and missed opportunities. In my mind I wanted to revisit these and take them further in my Part 5. I saw them as the seeds of inspiration that I could move with. A mistake in retrospect. I was not honouring my self as an artist who needs and strives to push herself and to see just what I can produce. I don’t want to just study a degree, I want to become the artist I dreamed of being when I was 14. I know through art I can express the soul that came on this earth to have a voice. I don’t wish the statement to be dramatic or pretentious. It is the truth that hides inside me. Given that truth, I now have looked at my work with a different narrative in my mind. What do the materials I choose to work with have to say? What voice do we together sound like?

I asked my tutor how I can move away from being representational and restrained. She advised me to just play and take the samples and exercises to the farthest point I could. Until I could do no more with them. I see clearly how I was doing this in part 1 and 2 but lost it in Part 3. I have printed out the photographs I took and have my mood board on the wall and also have workbooks and sketchbooks out covering one bedroom for me to sit amongst and to ponder over.

Time was of the essence in producing these images as the buildings are to be demolished on the 27th May 2015. I managed to have enough blood extracted to make the prints. I am calling these images ‘In my Grand-Mothers Footsteps’.

in my grand-mothers footsteps i

in my Grand-mothers footsteps ii

As I prepared myself for this work my mind was drawn to how my grand-mother and great grand-mother would have felt when they had to step over the threshold. I was simply there to add my generations D.N.A to the building, they had their hair shorn, clothes removed, deloused and the workhouse uniform to contend with. Whilst I know the emotional damage caused to them and how that impacted on my life, I did feel a sense of sadness for their experiences and also a feeling of pride that despite all they came through it.

A few days later I revisited the site this time in the evening to project the cine film onto the workhouse exterior, this piece of work I am calling ‘From the grave to the cradle’. It is depicting how something that lived inside my Grandmothers’ died when they entered the workhouse, in their ability to love and be whole. This impacted on my father and then in his relationship with me. It contains cine film that I inherited from my Father, images taken of me of which I had not seen it’s content until the projection on the workhouse walls. The viewing was difficult in many ways as it showed me as a vulnerable child whom I know to have endured terrible incidents. It also showed a child who despite all looked to be happy and thriving. I saw the mask of normality in the form of Whitsuntide events, visits to the park and playing in the garden. I knew what was hiding behind the clothes, the smiles and the supposedly happy family scenes. I also felt a sense of pride in myself for overcoming my difficult life events. the first time in this process that I have felt pride for who I had become, despite my upbringing. I had found my way to contemplate my life from the chain of events that had gone before and their impact had echoed down the generations.

I had hoped to have the images much larger so as to show the outline of the workhouse building, but unfortunately the projector I had only allowed an image size of 6 foot tall which whilst filming in order for the images to be clearly visible I had to film quite close up to the wall.